Monthly Archives: February 2014

Having repaired our share of HTC, formerly “High-Tech Computer Corporation” phones we have noticed a few things about this company that makes them stand out. As of late it has been a series of handsets that look amazing… from the outside. When it comes to repairs though any do-it-yourself-er out there ought to think twice. The internals of some HTC phones make you wonder just what the design team was thinking. One thing is for sure though. Going green wasn’t what they had in mind.

For the record I think that the 8X and One are beautiful phones… again from the outside. I even used the Vivid for about a year until I could no longer stand the 72 updates that were performed on every power up. What was that about?

Antenna wires and tape… everywhere. Why?

While a lot of manufacturers have started making phones that prevent the consumer from performing simple upgrades like changing their battery it seems to be only HTC that purposely designs phones which are more difficult to repair in any way whatsoever. According to Justin Huang, the concept designer of the HTC One, “…they have a special tool to disassemble the back cover, to let us have the ability to access all the components inside.” When asked about how to take the phone apart his response was “Don’t try it,” Presumably these statements were made while he was still on good terms with HTC and before he was arrested.

When your stock value drops 38% in one year maybe it’s time to rethink the way that you do business. HTC had only 7.1% market share in the US during Q3 of 2013 compared to Apple’s 40.6% and Samsung’s 24.9%. Perhaps part of this had to do with a bad reputation caused by experimenting earlier with the Windows 7 mobile OS on one of it’s handsets. Microsoft now offers the much improved 8 version and will soon release 8.1. Of course way back in 2011 the HD2 didn’t create many fans not just due to it’s OS but also a tendency toward hardware malfunction and failure. Still, considering that the One was released as their flagship phone in April of the year reflected in the aforementioned figures above it does not seem to have been the boost that they were hoping for.

Fortunately due to their lack of popularity there is an upside to all of this. Replacement parts for HTC phones drop in price dramatically after only a few months making repair still a wise option when an upgrade is not available. Until the “One 2” codenamed M8 is released in a couple of months it looks like this is as good as things get for HTC.